Media "Requests" as we head toward 2008

[Sonny]

MCLA Teams,

There are lot of new media initiatives up coming in the next few months.... Here are a few friendly suggestions/requests from the "media" that are trying to give you better & more frequent coverage for your fans & parents to enjoy:

1. PHOTOS - We would always love access to good action photos from your games this Fall or Spring. We will have a newly revised photo gallery this year and Will Moss of GrizLax.com fame has agreed to serve as our online photo editor once again.

We will have a full slate of MCLA correspondents from around the country covering MCLA teams, conferences, and games. Adding a timely photo or two to accompany an article really brings things to "life."

At a bare minimum, we need good head shots of all players on your team. You can see an excellent example of what I'm talking about in this release from Michigan Lacrosse:
http://www.collegelax.us/news/?p=5783

Get all of your players with their uniforms on one day for an indoor photo shoot. Use a camera on a tripod and a common (neutral) backdrop. Edit all the photos down to the same exact size and post them to your team web site to accompany your roster info/web page.

Finding a decent sports photographer might be difficult. Try hitting up your Student Newspaper/Yearbook photographers to come out to a well attended (high profile) game during the season. (Also, you can try your journalism department on campus.) You can also solicit from local photographers that shoot youth and H.S. sports to come shoot your game for a small fee. The photog in question would then resell images after the contest to players, fans, and parents.

2. JERSEYS- For radio/TV broadcast purposes, large numbers that are easily readable are highly suggested. Most of you are aware that our radio broadcasts of Oregon from Dallas last May were negatively impacted because we couldn't decipher the font on the jersey numbers from the press box.

Note the NCAA specs from the rulebook on jerseys. 10 inch centered numbers on the front of the jersey with 12 inch centered numbers on the back of the jersey. Large Block numbers are highly suggested and they always look classy (regardless of color scheme involved).

3. ROSTERS / PRONUNCIATION GUIDE - Make sure that you input full (accurate) information for each player when you input your official MCLA team roster into MCLA.us. Gather up all the information before and please don't leave anything blank.

Numerous teams that participated in last year's national tournament did not complete their full roster info on MCLA.us. I hope MCLA Conference Directors will be able to double check this info and remind teams to complete input of all the roster information on MCLA.us BEFORE the start of the season.

A pronunciation guide for your full roster is also suggested. Examples here:
Dartmouth Football
NHL Rosters on USAToday.com

If you spend some time this Fall/early Winter and publish all this information to your team's web site - It will make things go much smoother once we get to the 2008 spring season and the all important playoff games. Thanks for your help!

[Beta]

Hey Sonny,

You think it'd be possible to include a "Search" feature on the photo page that would find that search word?

Example->
Search: State

Returns:
San Diego State vs Cal 10/7/06
Florida State @ Georgia Tech 2/19/05
etc
etc
etc

Would that be possible? There's a lot of archives.

[Sonny]

Hey Sonny,

You think it'd be possible to include a "Search" feature on the photo page that would find that search word?

Example->
Search: State

Returns:
San Diego State vs Cal 10/7/06
Florida State @ Georgia Tech 2/19/05
etc
etc
etc

Would that be possible? There's a lot of archives.

Yep. Working on that.

[Buc_em_up]

You think it'd be possible to include a "Search" feature on the photo page that would find that search word?

I just use Ctrl "F" or Fan "F" (mac) for the browser's own search box, then I type in any pertinent search criteria such as school name or date. That works fine, but a Collegelax.us search feature would certainly be fancy.

[GrizLens]

I'm fairly certain that we can make that happen.